Tech Talk: Why Amazon Nabbed An eBay AI Exec

In the field of e-commerce, eBay and Amazon have long been thought of in the same way as Nintendo and Sega, or McDonald’s and Burger King. While eBay’s artificial intelligence chops aren’t shown off as openly as Amazon’s and mostly end up under the hood, this is another area where the two companies are competing. AI has not been a part of either company’s portfolio for all that long, of course; the right technology to start putting it into everyday products only came about recently. Thus, when eBay began forming their cognitive computing group back in 2013, they needed somebody who not only knew AI in and out, but would be able to form and lead a team to analyze AI technology, visualize possible products and other applications, and of…